If you are interested in volunteering to help with a straw bale house on Anglesey, near Rhosneigr, then we'd like to hear from you. My wife and I purchased land on Anglesey nearly 6 years ago, we have provisional plans for an oak framed house with lime rendered straw bale walls, and is practicable a straw bales insulated roof. It will make full use of solar thermal, solar PV and possibly wind (if we can get planning permission). One of the aims is not to use a drop of cement in the whole of the construction. We hope to start building later this year or, at the latest, next year.

If you have experience in straw bale build and wish to lend a hand you or wish to gain some experience then please either drop me an email or response to the post. We will be publishing a web site soon at www.builditwithstraw.co.uk (it's not live yet so please be patient).

This is a serious attempt to demonstrate that straw bale building can become a mainstream building technique rather than seen as some hippy way of living. We want to involve the local authority and the community as much as possible as we, like many others, see renewable building technology as the way forward.

Keep us posted please - we're planning something similar in Gwynedd, and would like to know how it goes. Any problems over planning / building regs? Particularly regards roof. No chance of anything except slate round here, though we fancy turf.

I'll keep you all posted. The new web site will, when finished, have a subscription service which I will use to send out regular bulletins, if you subscribe, but I'll use this forum topic as well.

However, here's a quick rundown. The land we have is a quarter acre just outside the village of Pencarnisiog. It has incredible views over Snowdonia and Yr Eifls, when the weather is good. You can see some images at http://pencarnisiog.co.uk a website which hasn't been updated for 3 years but we've not done a great deal since.

We have planning permission for a bungalow which expires in September 2008 so we are going to have to resubmit plans and that is our first steps. We were fortunate enough to buy the land when prices were still low. It had a derelict cottage on it which has now been demolished. It would have been nice to renovate it but was beyond redemption.

The house will use a load bearing internal oak frame, we're limited on size so we're designing a 1 1/2 story dwelling. I'd love to have a corrugated iron roof but may not be able to get that through planning. The outer shell will be straw bale reinforced with hazel and rendered with lime both inside and out, that will be the labour intensive part. Straw bale walls are very, very much cheaper than any other type but when you cost in rendering labour costs start to even out. However, straw and lime walls are very comfortable to live in as they breathe and are excellent acoustic barriers.

We're not that familiar with the planning process so it should be an exciting ride. We hope to get the local authority pro-active on this project so they can use it as a model. In outward appearance it will look like a conventional house but will be almost zero net carbon and use renewable or recycled materials.

I have already calculated heat loss and during the coldest period should only require 3kW of heat, a small wood stove, to maintain 19C, but that's assuming we can make it air tight and the build quality is top notch. It's more likely to be 5-7kW still a very low value by today’s standards. Straw bale has a U-value of 0.13 so it’s well within building regs. If we can get straw bale into the roof we will but that will be challenging.

We will use solar hot water and solar PV, there's plenty of sky here. Also, wind is plentiful and consistent so planning for a small turbine will be put in soon.

The timber frame will be contractor built but the rest we’ll do ourselves with a lot of help partly to minimise costs and partly so we can enthuse others to build the same way.

Last edited by vegplot on Sat Jan 05, 08 3:21 pm; edited 1 time in total

As you already have planning unless you want to alter what the planning is for (assuming its full planning not outline) as long as you have started works before the planning runs out then you are ok to continue & as far as I can see you then can take as long as you like to finish the project.

As we're just outside the village development envelope we have three years from expiry of existing permission, it's a stipulation on the permission we have got. We've been told it can't be extended and won't be renewed. Which is a strange comment to make as we've already renewed it once It won't be a problem though as we intend to crack on as quickly as possible.

I know the theory but am lacking in practice so earthyvirgo and myself are going on a 5 day straw bale building course at the beginning of May in Suffolk. It's run by Amazon Nails and should be interesting. I'll take camera and post pictures and notes on new web site (when I've finished the CMS).

Sounds brilliant, but we are too far away to be of any practical help I'm afraid.
Have you contacted LILI (Low Impact Living Initiative) near Oxford? they are a mine of useful informtion on all aspects of green building methods, planning permission etc, and of course CAT in Wales?